Thessalonica

“I know,” Father Luke repeated, unruffled still. “If you like, I’ll say my say all over again, so we can have the argument at yet another remove.”

“No, thanks.” George tried another tack: “If we’d been late coming down from the hills, the gods of the Slavs might have overthrown Thessalonica before we could do anything to the wizards who brought them forth.”

“So they might have,” Father Luke said. “But we were in good time, if barely in good time, the reason being that God did not allow us to be late.”

“You’ve got all the answers,” George said, chuckling.

The priest shook his head. “No. Only one.” He rose from the table and clasped George’s hand. “I was heading back toward St. Elias’ when you waylaid me and dragged me in here. If you can stay a bit longer, drink another cup of wine for me.” Off he went, a man who knew where he was going and why.

“Do you want that cup of wine or not?” the barmaid asked when George sat for a minute or two without calling for it.

He stared at her. She stared back, altogether unembarrassed about eavesdropping. “Yes, I’ll take it,” he said at last. She brought it over to him and hovered till he set coins on the tabletop. By the way she scooped them up, she might have suspected they were counterfeit. Thus encouraged, George gulped down the wine and left.

It had started to snow while he was in the tavern. Snowflakes danced in the air. A thin layer of white lay over everything, not yet streaked with soot, not yet trampled into slush. George stood outside the doorway for a moment: the falling snow was beautiful.

It was also cold. He wrapped his tunic more tightly around himself and hurried off toward his own home and shop. The snow crunched under his boots. Every time he exhaled, he breathed out fog.

As he walked along, shivering, he thought about what Father Luke had said. Crotus and Nephele thought differently: he’d said as much himself. The Avar priest had thought differently, too, till the centaurs put paid to him. Who had the right of it?

“Menas, a part of God’s plan?” George snorted. The notion was absurd on the face of it.

He walked a few steps farther. Then, despite snow, despite cold, he stopped. Was it absurd? Or was the pattern of events larger and more complex than George had perceived till this moment? Had God cured Menas’ paralysis so that the rich noble, having become George’s enemy, could, by shutting him out of the city, force him up into the hills to meet the centaurs, to gain Perseus’ cap, to bring Father Luke up into the hills to get the centaurs drunk so they would have the spirit to attack the Slavs and Avars besieging Thessalonica and help save it?

He looked up into the gray sky. Was that God’s will he saw, or only his own imagination running away with him after a couple of cups of wine? Either way, how was he supposed to tell?

A snowflake landed on the tip of his nose. He brushed it off and started walking again. He was only a couple of blocks from home.